Comic Book Review: Hard Boiled

I had the Hard Boiled comic stacked in my pending reading items since years. With my new policy at home of not adding new books or comics until something goes out (usually gifted to my close friends), I keep now lowering that stack of "pending reads". On to the comic itself, we're presented with 128 pages with the story of Nixon, an apparent tax collector that seems to be two things: a) a badass tought guy, and b) seemingly prone to have jobs that tend to go really bad and violent. After one of such incidents, he wakes up recalling it as a dream, but something just doesn't fits in place in reality...

The world presented is a highly depressive, polluted, sex-and-drugs driven dystopian future where cities are overpopulated, cars move from city jam to city jam, and polices have a dozen guns per person and move in huge tank-like vehicles. The story is as gory as you can imagine, and then some more, combined with an hyper-detailed drawing where each scene has so many tiny details, so many mechanical pieces or so many people (sometimes dead) that you need to take your time to properly examine it after reading the texts or grasping the general action. I recall from when I was younger some comics with similar almost excessive amount of detail, and it makes sense as the original comics were printed between 1990 and 1992.

While the story is nothing impressive, the amount of tiny details and jokes in the backgrounds, papers, soldier helmets and even candy boxes is staggering so I really recommend the reading.